Late Knight's Fall
by Union-Jack2.0
Summary: Extreme AU. The Magog were only a minor threat in the days of Captain Dylan Hunt. Three centuries passed. The Magog grew as a threat, until they finally struck a series of deadly blows against the Systems Commonwealth. The High Guard were eventually able
1. Chapter One: Knight Fall

Title: Late Knight's Fall

Author: Union-Jack2.0

Disclaimer: Various American individuals and companies own the stuff from the telly series. I own all characters, planets, places, ships and other stuff I create for this fic. I'm just messing around, getting some practice in and enjoying myself, I'm not here to make any cash from this. If anyone wants to use elements of this fanfic or base a fanfic of their own in this AU, call me at 'oblivion727 _at_ fsmail dot net' (this applies to Tribune as well—yeah, as if they'd be interested! ;-)). Chances are I'll say 'yes', but I'd prefer if you checked first—my characters, my AU, I'd like to know what people are doing with 'em, yuh?

Rating: Oh what the hell, '**M**', stay out of trouble. There'll be no explicit sex, usual explanation for that (I find porn dull, I only write stuff I'd want to read so I don't bother writing that), some violence, possibly disturbing scenes, some language guaranteed and in all honesty half of that'll prob'ly be from me in my own bloody Author's Notes.

Spoilers: I HAVE NO HIT LIST. This is an AU where things are _very VERY_ different. You could probably get away with reading this without having seen more than just a couple of episodes provided you knew what all the characters from the series looked like and how they behave and react and how Andromeda's decks, control centres and virtual reality matrix appear. Some miniscule references that will have vague meaning to regular viewers may be encountered, but you don't need to be a die-hard watcher to understand this fic. If you've seen one or two episodes and can recognise the regular characters, that's good enough.

Season: Technically, Season One, but more on that later…

Pairing: Some romance possibly, but again more on that later…

Summary: AU. The Magog were only a minor threat in the days of Captain Dylan Hunt. As time passed, Dylan married his fiancé and later turned over command of the Andromeda Ascendant to his first officer Gaheris Rhade. Rhade would in time relinquish command to his own first officer, Refractions of Dawn.

Three centuries passed. The Magog grew as a threat, until they finally struck a series of deadly blows against the Systems Commonwealth. The High Guard were eventually able to drive them back, and the treaty of Castalia was signed with the Magog.

Now, Andromeda's captain and first officer are Rebecca Valentine and Telemachus Rhade respectively. And the Known Worlds are about to change most drastically…

Author's Note: The inspiration for this was from the end of 'The Widening Gyre' when I played it back last summer, when Dylan told Beka that in the days of the Commonwealth she would have "made one hell of a commanding officer." The next morning I awoke to find my imagination had gone into overdrive blitzkrieging away at five-times the speed of light and I had this footage in my mind's eye of 'Under The Night'…but _very_ different.

Because what if she _had_ been Andromeda's Captain, with Telemachus Rhade as her first officer? And thus arose this great work…

Apologies for the first half of Chapter One being a semi-rehash, but I can guarantee that from the second half on out, this fic will only vaguely resemble what you can see on the telly. At times, it may not bear any semblance to it at all…

Many, many thanks to Khalia Morningstar who kindly previewed and reviewed this for me before I posted.

Usual notes of reassurance: Any character who doesn't normally do so will not be written with a British accent. For the reasons why, see my earlier fic 'Of Larvae and Love'. Carl Forbes, however, is _supposed_ to be of English descent so his dialogue will be written accordingly and by that I'm talking about a _genuine_ accent, not the stuff that most people who've never met an English person for real before seem to believe in for reasons beyond my comprehension. We don't all sound like Hugh Grant, y'know. If it comes to that, the only person on the whole _planet_ who sounds like Hugh Grant _is_ Hugh Grant. Secondly, no porn here. Romance I like, porn I find dull.

Now ladies, gentles, all, list to my tale of a…

**LATE KNIGHT'S FALL**

**CHAPTER ONE:**

**KNIGHT FALL**

_"There are no all-encompassing_

_cure-all answers to the great questions._

_Only individual solutions that we_

_make for ourselves."_

—Davis Crombie from England, circa Earth Year 2004

* * *

"Battle stations. Battle stations. All crew, man your battle stations." Andromeda called out over the cacophony of blaring klaxons.

'Beka' Valentine, Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant, grinned as she leapt down a ladder, using her anti-gravity harness to catch herself at the bottom of the fifteen-storeys deep shaft.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Andromeda chided as her maverick Captain floated gently to the deck plates. "What if your anti-grav harness failed and I couldn't catch you in time?"

"Oh, Rommie, you wouldn't let that happen, because then you'd have to break in a brand spanking new captain," Beka grinned mischievously.

Andromeda materialised a hologram beside her, shaking her head. "You remind me of one of my former Captains. He took crazy risks just like that."

"Give me his contact details and address and I'll look him up sometime, buy him a drink or two," Beka chuckled as she ran onwards, espying her first officer. "Sounds like we'd get along _famously_."

"Sorry. Dylan Hunt died of old age over two-hundred and forty years ago."

Beka sobered. "_The_ Dylan Hunt? Wait, you're telling me _he_ was—"

"Like you?" Andromeda smiled to herself inside her matrix. "Oh yes."

Beka shook her head in disbelief as she slowed and halted beside her Nietzschean first officer, Telemachus Rhade. "Report."

"All stations manned and ready Captain," he announced.

"Elapsed time, two minutes seventeen seconds," Andromeda called.

Rhade growled deep in his throat, the bone blades on his forearms briefly extending then collapsing as he activated an intercom panel. "Too slow!" he roared.

Beka winced, gently pressing against her ear to re-equalise the pressure. "Too loud."

"All hands, stand down!" Rhade bellowed, apparently not heeding her.

Andromeda grinned widely, remembering Telemachus' genetic ancestor Gaheris, and his banter with Dylan in the old days. An alarm sounded. "All crew, stand down from stations. All crew, stand down. End of drill," she declared.

"Ship-wide, Rommie," Beka ordered. "This is the captain. Not bad people, but I'm not doing any cartwheels. Team leaders, co-ordinate additional sessions. You know what to do. Let's get it under two minutes. Dismissed." Andromeda's hologram dissipated in flickering shower of light.

"I didn't think they did that badly," Beka commented as Rhade accompanied her to Command.

"That's a somewhat optimistic attitude, Captain. And Nietzscheans don't believe in optimism," he pointed out. "It inhibits survival."

"So does pessimism," she countered. "Anyway, about two months from now. You never did tell me whether you'd be coming to my brother's wedding with me or not."

He grinned. "Agent Valentine, married man. Hard to believe. I understand your mother, the admiral, is pleased by the news?"

She returned the grin teasingly. "You're still not answering my question…"

"Captain Valentine, we're receiving a hail from a Systems Courier ship," Andromeda informed them. "It's indicating a stellar level emergency."

The two officers exchanged glances. "On our way."

* * *

"Captain On Deck," a Lancer sergeant called as Beka walked onto the Andromeda Ascendant's command deck, closely followed by Rhade.

"As you were," Beka returned as she headed for the command station, unconsciously straightening her crimson jacket. "Status."

"A courier just transited to normal space, we're moving to intercept," an ensign operating the sensor console reported.

"Are we close enough for real time?" Beka asked.

Rhade took his station across the deck from the Captain and readied himself. When communications were established a dark-skinned Nietzschean woman filled the monitor.

"This is the Systems Courier ship _Alacrative Missive, _do you copy?" the courier pilot called out insistently.

"Go ahead _Missive_," Rhade responded.

"It's a rogue black hole! Hephaestus system. They're trying to evacuate, but there aren't enough ships."

"Hephaestus has a population of nearly a billion sentients," Andromeda informed her captain.

"You're the first ship I've contacted," the _Missive_'s pilot told them.

"Andromeda, are there any other High Guard ships in the area?" Beka asked as she took over the piloting console and began plotting a course to Hephaestus.

"Yes. The Balance of Judgement, a _Siege Perilous_-class destroyer is two systems away on a combat training assignment."

"Keep moving, notify everyone you can," Rhade ordered the courier pilot. He turned to a nearby crewman. "Dispatch our own couriers. Tell them to spread the word, and make sure one of them's headed for the Judgement."

"Ship-wide. This is the captain," Beka broadcast. "All hands, prepare to receive refugees. Rig the ship for maximum capacity."

"Ejecting cargo from bays one through five," Andromeda's hologram calmly announced.

"Approaching transit point," Beka broadcast over the intercom. "All hands, brace for slipstream. Transitting to slipstream on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark."

With that, a shimmering, glittering tear in the fabric of space and time opened before them. Within, strands of energy flickered and writhed like living things. Then the captain nudged Andromeda forward, and the silver chains of the slipstream grabbed them and pulled them in.

Her eyes glued to the flickering threads of electricity they were riding through, Beka yanked the controls around, ever searching for the right turns and twists, and most importantly safe exits.

A faint, barely audible groan rose from Andromeda's straining walls as she forced the vessel to pick up speed and they went hurtling through the 'stream until at last she smoothly yanked them over to the right exit.

"Transitting back to normal space in three, two, and…"

Moments later, the stream hurled them out, leaving them gliding through empty space, small residual sparks of electricity dancing on the hull.

"We're receiving over a thousand distress signals," the communications officer reported.

"Reading a powerful singularity in the outer solar system. Mass: three times ten to the thirty-first kilos. Range: one-point-two light minutes." Andromeda stated calmly.

Rhade looked up from his console to his commanding officer. "Hephaestus' population is over seventy-five percent Nietzscheans. If my people are running, the situation must be desperate."

She nodded at this. "We'll take on as many people as we can. Deploy outrunners. If there are any orbital habitats near the singularity, we've got to evacuate them immediately."

"A contingent of ships is closing on us, aft and port," the Than at the sensor console chittered.

Beka groaned at this news; just what they needed, panicky evacuee ships making things complicated. "Communications, tell them we'll get to them as soon as we—"

The deck shuddered under multiple missile impacts.

"They're firing on us!" Lieutenant Lance, a heavy-gravity worlder, shouted from the fire control station.

"It's a trap," Andromeda's hologram practically growled in anger.

"Battle stations!" Beka yelled.

* * *

_A light flickered through the shifting waves and folds of the timestream…_

_A whisper of death swept through the physical realm of the universe…_

_And, the board set, the pieces moving, the end of the beginning at last came to a close after so very long…_

* * *

"All battle stations manned and ready. One minute, thirty-one seconds," Rhade thundered over the din of weapons impacts on the hull.

"Deploy combat drones. How many ships are we up against?" Beka demanded.

"I'm detecting over fifteen thousand enemy vessels." Andromeda sounded almost daunted.

"_What?_"

"Five hundred ships are already within combat radius. All of them appear to be of Nietzschean design."

Lance shook his heavy head incredulously. "Fifteen thousand ships? It must have taken years to gather a force this big."

Rhade's expression was unreadable. "Sir, I recommend we deploy Nova bombs."

Beka was aghast. "This system is inhabited! I will NOT use strategic weapons, no matter how many ships we're up against."

Her old friend shrugged as more blasts impacted with the outer hull. "As you wish."

"More ships are closing," Lance snapped. "Requesting permission to return fire with offensive missile batteries and hunter-killer drones."

"Launch 'em. Missile tubes one through forty, ten salvos firing as you acquire targets, ten salvos of hunter-killer drones."

"That's half our offensive payload," he observed, unleashing the first volley.

"Sounds about right. We need to punch through, warn the rest of the High Guard."

Rhade looked at her questioningly. "Do you believe this is some kind of Nietzschean conspiracy against the Commonwealth?"

She nodded toward the main viewscreen. "They're Nietzscheans. They're shooting at us. They have fifteen thousand ships. What else can this be."

"Given the circumstances, I should be confined to the brig, along with the other Nietzscheans in the crew."

"Are you telling me I can't trust you?" She could hardly believe what she was hearing.

"I'm saying you can't afford to take any chances," Telemachus told her, a bland expression effectively masking his feelings.

She sighed, and turned to sergeant Tan Uthrew, a Lancer veteran who'd worked with her in her Argosy Special Operations days. "Sergeant, take Commander Rhade to the brig. See to it that the other Nietzschean crewmembers are relieved of duty."

"Aye, Captain," he saluted her gravely, then joined another Lancer and escorted Telemachus from Command.

"Dammit," she snarled, as two squadrons of frigates broke formation, making strafing attacks on their hull. "We can't manoeuvre. There's too many of them."

"We've lost over seventy percent of our drones," Andromeda told her, sounding worried.

"And we can't transit to slipstream." Beka groaned as another, heavier volley struck them amidships. "The gravitational pull of that black hole is too strong. We're trapped."

"Hull breach on level eight, section three. Personnel are evacuating…Captain, I've lost contact with the lower decks."

* * *

"C'mon, everybody out! We're losing life support, go go go!" Lieutenant Seamus Harper sighed with relief as he followed the last of his engineering detail to safety, as emergency bulkheads sealed off the damaged section behind them.

"What's going to happen Chief!" Uthel looked frantic, and the chief engineer was more than a little worried when he noticed that the Castalian ensign's skin looked unhealthily dry.

"Don't you worry too much about it," he assured her, as he advanced to lead the engineers to the upper decks. "No Valentine has failed before, and sure as hell our captain won't let us down today either. Now come on, all of you, we've got to get out of here before this section loses life support as well. Haul it!"

* * *

"Andromeda, is there any way we can contact the Judgement, warn him off?"

"Impossible, Captain. I met him once, sixty years ago. If our courier ship reached him, it is most likely he will have entered slipstream at the earliest possible time and we won't be able to contact him. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do." She sounded somewhat choked with emotion. If she had been organic, she would most likely have been blinking back tears at the knowledge of the terrible fate that surely awaited the noble ship.

The fate that she would herself most certainly meet.

"We've got multiple hull breaches," Lance growled as he laid down suppressing fire. "Life support is failing."

"And we need ten more minutes to get past the gravitational distortions before we can transit. We're not gonna make it." Beka hated herself even as she verbalised her conclusion. She looked over at Andromeda's hologram. "How many of your androids are still functional?"

"Twenty-nine. Fifteen others are still on-line, but I can't…"

"It'll have to do. Man the critical systems. Give me ship-wide."

"Ship-wide."

Beka cleared the lump from her throat. She had known ever since becoming Andromeda's Captain that she might someday have to issue this order. She had also hoped to never have to do such a thing.

"This is the captain. All hands abandon ship. Repeat. All hands abandon ship. Use every available escape pod and drone. Get away from the Andromeda as fast as possible, then scatter. Make your way to Acomba One Starport and warn the High Guard what's happened here."

* * *

Harper sighed with relief as the last of his team's escape pods vanished into the inky blackness of space. His people were safe, and now part of his duties were fulfilled.

He ran onwards, swiftly climbing ever upwards toward the Command Centre. When he'd been promoted to Chief Engineer of the Andromeda Ascendant, finally reaching the peak of his meteoric rise through the ranks, he had sworn two things; to look after the personnel under his command, and to care for Andromeda herself.

In many ways, they were family. She was his light, his closest friend, someone with whom he shared a bond far more intense than that shared by lovers, and he would be _damned_ if he would flee and abandon her. Through their incredible link that was possible with his High Guard dataport, they had shared one of the most intimate and special bonds and relationships that two people could ever enjoy.

To have left her would have been nothing less than to have betrayed her. And to have betrayed her would have been to have betrayed himself, and his love for her.

That was something he would never do.

* * *

"Abandon ship. All crew, abandon ship. Proceed to escape pods. Shuttles available on Hangar Deck Three. Abandon ship. Abandon ship. Abandon ship."

Uthrew gestured respectfully to his superior. "This way, sir."

Before he could so much as blink, Rhade's bone blades snapped out, and the Nietzschean plunged them into the throats of Uthrew and the other Lancer. They were dead long before they hit the ground.

He shook his head sorrowfully. "Should train 'em better," he muttered, as he relieved the sergeant of his force lance and headed off at a dead run.

* * *

Beka was surprised when the doors to Command slid open to admit her Chief Engineer. But then, perhaps such a reaction was unwarranted. She knew that Andromeda and he had a strong, if professional relationship, but still…

"What _are_ you doing here?" she asked.

"With all due respect Captain, whatever trick you've got up your sleeve, you'll need a good engineer to make it happen." He smiled disarmingly, spreading his arms wide. "And here I am."

"I ordered you to abandon ship."

He grinned as he vaulted the engineering console. "Let the record show that Chief Engineer First Lieutenant Seamus Zelazny Harper respectfully refuses to comply. If we get out of this in one piece, you can always court-martial me."

She _tut_ted, grinning widely despite herself. "You can start helping by sealing off Command. Vent the rest of the atmosphere. We need to make Andromeda as light as possible."

* * *

With his superior Nietzschean senses, Telemachus heard a noise that ordinary humans couldn't possibly hear. It was a faint hissing, and he realised that it was the atmosphere being vented. He reached into the fold of cloth in which he had stored breathing apparatus, then placed it into his mouth.

"The rest of the ship's been depressurised."

"Setting a course. Heading zero-nine-zero by negative fifteen."

Harper looked at her, shocked. "But Captain, that takes us right—"

"I know where it takes us," she cut him off. "Straight into the black hole."

The deck trembled again, as though in fear, but they both knew that they were being fired on again.

Andromeda's hologram looked worried to say the least. "Beka, are you sure about this? My connections to the rest of the ship are shot. We're leaking anti-protons from the port reserve tanks. I can't guarantee I'll have enough power left to pull us away from the singularity."

Beka grinned wickedly as they shook again under the Nietzscheans' furious assault. "We're not strong enough to fight our way free," she explained. "We've gotta use the black hole's gravity to slingshot us away from the Nietzscheans. It's our only chance. All forward."

"Gravity fields are holding!" Harper yelled over the noise of the bombardment. "Fire control is offline! All we've got left are PDL's."

"All right. Let's build up some speed," Beka grinned in challenge to their pursuers. "Let's see how crazy these guys are."

"We're at twenty-five PSL," Harper called. "Twenty-six. Twenty-eight. Thirty!"

The androids manning the stations around Command started to collapse, and the power died around them. Andromeda's hologram and visage on the main viewscreen flickered, emitting occasional bursts of white noise. "The main energy grid…I'm losing power…" Her words were heavily distorted.

"We've lost all power," Harper whispered.

"Going to reserves." Beka fought to keep a firm grip on the piloting controls.

"Rommie! Are you there?" Harper looked almost frantic.

Andromeda's hologram partially materialised, flickering in and out of existence.

"The A.I. network's been disrupted," Beka realised.

"How could that happen?"

"We can still make it. One thing's for sure. There's no turning back now."

* * *

On his way to the bridge, he heard Andromeda's familiar voice, calling out not his rank, but his name, which hinted at how close the ship was to its officers. "Rhade?"

His response was to shoot out the screen with a single shot from his force lance.

He reached the doors leading to Command, which opened with a compliant hiss.

* * *

"Ten light seconds away." Andromeda said.

"Diverting all power to starboard engine and plotting a hyperbolic flyby. Just gotta keep us at least a half light-second away from the event horizon." Beka grinned in satisfaction as she successfully executed the course despite their mounting damage. "Got it."

Andromeda managed to stabilise her hologram for a brief while, maintaining cohesion through sheer willpower. "Beka!" she cried. "Sabotage!"

"Sabotage. Great," Beka groaned. "That's all we need."

"Captain!" Harper shouted. "The starboard engines are off-plane."

Beka grimaced. "Rotating ship to compens…"

She trailed off as the doors slid open.

Harper looked up from the engineering console in surprise. "Commander?" he warily asked. Shortly before losing life support, a pair of Lancers had arrived in engineering and taken a Nietzschean officer on his team into custody.

Telemachus aimed and fired straight at the diminutive engineer, the effector punching through the human's shoulder and severing an artery even as he hurled himself to one side in a futile attempt to avoid the shot. He then began to fire at his best friend, who had leapt behind a console at the sound of his shot.

"Rhade!" Beka shouted as they exchanged fire.

His face remained a mask of stone. "I tried to warn you." He fired, advancing into Command and prowling about its perimeter, steadily approaching her.

She didn't understand. "What are you doing!"

"Ensuring the survival of my people!" Telemachus shouted. "The Commonwealth is weak. It bargains with its enemies, it compromises. My people are engineered to be perfect! And the Commonwealth is no place for the strong."

"So the Nietzscheans decided to destroy it."

"We spent years preparing, waiting, arguing," Telemachus told her. "For a long time, I opposed the destruction of the Systems Commonwealth. So did many others. The Treaty of Castalia changed all that."

"The Magog," realised the Captain before sliding behind another console as her shelter disintegrated under Telemachus' fusillade.

"Yes!" he snarled, rage swelling within him. "The Magog. Savages. Predators. They eat sentient beings. They reproduce by rape." He paused to reach down and impale a fallen android on his bone blades, ensuring that they would battle alone. "They killed over two billion people in the Moebius system. They invaded Earth, raping and murdering its citizens for two whole years. They destroyed the Nietzschean colony on Newton, and obliterated the Tarazed research outpost. And what did the Commonwealth do!"

"We made peace with them!" Beka protested.

"You _compromised_ with monsters! The blood of over two billion people cried out for vengeance, and you made _peace_," Telemachus spat out, the memory and emotions clear. He used them, fuelling his attacks, guiding his shots. "You have sown the wind. You shall reap the whirlwind."

Beka countered again, but with far more than just words. "You know what your trouble is, Rhade? You talk too much."

Her force lance slid across the floor in his direction. Telemachus recognised the beeping noise it emitted, and leapt away as quickly as he could. It almost wasn't enough, and he felt the heat and force of the explosion propel him forward as his force lance fell from his fingers.

Beka rushed him, trying to take advantage, but Telemachus had already recovered from the momentary shock, and met her head on, bone blades extended and waiting.

She dodged his first pair of blows—feints, she realised, as the heel of his hand caught her squarely in the chest and sent her sprawling onto her back. Her booted foot intercepted his kick before it could be landed, and she retaliated by slamming the toe of her boot into the side of his kneecap.

He grunted in pain and surprise, took a step back and took a running leap. Her eyes widened briefly and she rolled to one side, his precisely-aimed boots barely brushing the tips of her closely-cropped hair. She swung back up to her feet, exchanging a furious flurry of blows that would have exhausted an ordinary pair of humans and left them lying dead in defeat.

The High Guard officers barely worked up a sweat.

Rhade dodged, and Beka's momentum propelled her forwards. He paused, hesitated for barely a quarter of a second. He believed she would stumble past him, leaving herself vulnerable. Could he really do this? Could he kill his captain? His friend? The woman whom he had so greatly admired for many years? The person for whom one of his daughters had been named?

She proved him _wrong._

A single stride catapulted her forwards too fast for him to take advantage of, and she sprang into the air, extending her long legs before herself. She lashed out at the bulkheads beyond, twisting herself in mid-air—

_Time slowed._

—as she spun, she kicked out.

Telemachus was caught off guard.

It was enough. Beka's boots connected with her first officer's temple, knocking him to the deck.

Time returned to normal.

"What was that?" she demanded of Andromeda.

"A temporal distortion. Our artificial gravity must be amplifying the time dilation effects of the black hole," came the prompt reply.

By this time, Telemachus had recovered, and leapt to attack once more. As she approached, his legs span out, boots catching her in the stomach and on her chin, staggering her as he effortlessly flipped himself to his feet once more, charging.

He lunged at her, intent on impaling her upon his bone blades. She seized his forearm, adrenaline coursing through her as she slammed the limb against the surface of a nearby console, snapping off the right foremost bone blade.

She redoubled her efforts, slugging him in the face and following through by kicking him squarely in the gut. He stumbled back a few paces, then halted against a door, grinning as he nursed his injuries.

"Give up, you can't win," he told Beka.

"I told you before," the blonde woman said, spying Harper's force lance. Telemachus noted the movement, saw his own force lance, and they both leapt away at the same time.

_Time slowed again._

Beka lunged over the console, tugging the weapon from her now-unconscious chief-engineer's holster, whilst Telemachus spun over the fire control station to where his weapon had dropped.

"Time dilation is increasing," Andromeda reported, her voice slurred by the distortion.

"Pessimism is not a survival trait!" Beka shouted as they both raised their respective force lances.

Telemachus fired and she recoiled, the ruby-red effector just barely missing her.

They leapt into the air again, firing at each other. Telemachus' shot almost clipped his Captain, but Beka's aim was to prove the surer, and punctured the Nietzschean. Both fell heavily to the deck.

Beka crossed to her dying friend. "Telemachus, what have you done?" she asked, wracked with grief at her own actions.

The other gasped in pain, fighting to speak as he gently grasped her hand. "I'm proud of you. You should be…"

_Time stopped._

The Andromeda Ascendant had reached the event horizon of the black hole.

* * *

The _Quicksilver Arrow_ shuddered as the Kalderan fighters came about for another pass. Seated in the pilot's chair at the very fore of the cluttered cockpit, Reverend Behemial Far Traveller prayed fervently to the Divine under his breath, his claws clinging to the controls as he desperately manoeuvred the salvage vessel to avoid the worst of their firestorm. A steady stream of choice and intense swearing punctuated the opening of the attack run as Carl Forbes blazed away at them with the ship's AP gun batteries to little avail.

"Come on, come on me old son. I got you ya li'l bastard, I got you…in…my…_sights_. _Lights_ _out_, sunshine!" he snarled victoriously as a fighter erupted into an expanding ball of flames under his barrage. "Reverend, come about to zero-two-niner, negative thirty degrees and cut to half cruising speed."

"Coming about," the Magog priest agreed, carefully and swiftly executing the manoeuvre.

"Trance, how're we doing back there?" the blonde man hollered. Since the intercom system had finally given up the ghost last year, they were reduced to either using radio headsets or simply shouting at the tops of their lungs.

In the depths of the _Arrow_'s engine room, Trance Gemini relaxed her grip on a pipe with her tail and tumbled to the deck below, landing neatly in a roll onto her feet. She groaned as she stowed her nanowelder into her toolbelt as she crossed to one of the consoles. "Go easy on the sub-light engines!" she yelled, positioning her head a little better to take full advantage of the room's echoes. "Keep under two-thirds, the AP tanks are starting to become unstable! I'm gonna try and lock them down as best I can, but it's not going to be easy and I'll need to cut all engines in a few minutes else they'll either shut down or blow up on us!"

"You get that Rev?" Carl asked.

"I certainly did," came a gravelly reply.

"Cut to one third and come about to five-eight-one at forty degrees positive. Lining up a shot…"

Rev sweated, staining his fur and robe as he set their new course. The remaining pair of fighters seemed to be learning from their pack mates' demise, and were spreading out their formation so as to avoid the enfilation techniques that the _Arrow_ was reputed and famed in spacer circles for executing so perfectly.

"Come on…right this way lads…that's it…"

"New contact!" Rev shouted. "Closing fast from behind the Kalderans… they're firing! Missile contacts from the Kalderan fighters!"

"Firing!" he snarled, loosing shots from the AP guns and manually scattering point-defence-laser fire into an impregnable grid to block the incoming missiles in a manner that was as instinctive as it was methodical in its undertaking. The warheads were destroyed before their homing computers had even fully locked in on the _Arrow_'s position.

"The new contact…sensors say it's a _Gargoyle_-class Nietzschean fighter!" Rev was surprised indeed. Nietzscheans and Kalderans working together? Well, they were returning to Than-Thre-Kul having salvaged what they could of a wrecked Nietzschean battlewagon in the Witchhead nebula, so perhaps it wasn't an entirely implausible notion.

As he watched, the two Kalderan fighters erupted under the fire from the _Arrow_—

—and from the volley of firepower from the _Gargoyle_.

_What was going on?_

"Ah…Carl, we're receiving a transmission from the _Gargoyle_?" Rev was thoroughly confused now.

"Come to all stop and put 'im on," his captain grinned, clambering from the fire-control seat and clapping him on one furry shoulder.

A pleasantly familiar face swam onto the overhead monitor. "IT'S ABOUT BLOODY TIME!" Carl mock-roared at the handsomely featured, dark-skinned Nietzschean. "What kept you?"

"Enga's Redoubt is somewhat heavily defended," Pyrrhus Anasazi sniffed, seemingly hurt and playing along with the joke. "In all seriousness Captain Forbes, I fear that my route had to be extended far further than I believed it would be. The Drago Kazov were most dogged in my pursuit, and I felt it best if you were not faced with the…_inconvenience_…of a Nietzschean battlegroup."

A broad grin worked its way across Carl's features. "You must've read my mind, mate. C'mon over—I'm sure we can squeeze that thing in at the top of the cargo hold."

"Why, thank you Captain," Pyrrhus returned the expression, nodding slightly to him as he ended the transmission.

"Nice going, Rev. Take a break, mate, get some sleep if you can. I'll see to Pyrrhus, and then give Trance a hand."

* * *

"OW! You know, this is _just_ impossible," Trance moaned as she finally resealed the engine housing. "Face it, we need a proper engineer Carl. We're all amateurs when it comes to this."

"Been—_hnf_—keeping an eye out for just such an employee," Carl assured her. "They don't exactly drop out of the stars—_come on, that's it you li'l so'n'so_—unfortunately." He straightened, mopping sweat from his brow as he flipped a tool over his shoulder and neatly into a toolbox on the far side of engineering. "I get your point, though."

"How long?" A dreadlocked head appeared in the hatchway.

"Yonks," came an exhausted reply. "We've been at 'em for six hours now, and believe you me we'll need a couple of days solid if we're to get the _Arrow_ up to full speed again."

The Nietzschean mercenary nodded solemnly at the news. "If the slipstream drive is still operational, I recommend we relocate to a less conspicuous system for the duration of the repairs."

"Yeah, I reckon you're right on the money there," Carl grinned tiredly as he wiped his hands on a rag. "The Gravian system's quite close."

"What about Hephaestus?" Trance asked. "I mean, since that Nova bomb went off during the Fall of the Commonwealth, no one's ever been there. I heard that not even the Kalderans are likely to go there. People keep talking about the system being haunted or cursed or something."

The human and Nietzschean exchanged glances. "Good point," Carl finally broke the silence. "Know anyone who uses that place?"

"One," Pyrrhus allowed.

"Seriously?"

The Nietzschean broke out into a broad grin. "Me. And I've never had any problems there. Indeed, it usually makes for a fine solution to some of my problems."

"Like losing pursuit," Carl twitched a golden eyebrow. "Let's get going."

* * *

Time resumed as if it had never before stopped.

Beka Valentine was shocked. Just a few moments ago, she had been fighting a battle to the death with her best friend. A traitor to the Commonwealth.

And she had won.

Andromeda's hologram flickered back on, her form full of static. "Captain Valentine! Beka, are you all right?"

Beka rose from Rhade's body, drained. "I'll live," she told Andromeda. "I've…I need to get Harper to Medical. If you have an android operational, could you get it up here please, give me a hand?"

"Captain Valentine, something's wrong." That swiftly caught Beka's attention. "We're moving away from the singularity, but the Nietzschean fleet, our escape pods, they're all gone. The system's planets, the asteroid belt…I can detect only debris."

"That's impossible," Beka replied immediately.

"We may have experienced more severe time dilations as we approached the event horizon of the black hole."

"How severe?" Beka demanded.

Andromeda's hologram shimmered slightly as she looked to be deep in thought. Suddenly, a shocked look appeared on her face. She hesitated.

Beka was too impatient to wait, her patience snapped. "Spit it out!"

Andromeda replied, somewhat reluctant to cause her Captain pain but unable to refuse orders, "According to my calculations, we have been frozen in time for over three hundred years."

"Three hundred years?" Shock descended over the Captain. "Oh my God," she whispered. "My family? The-the rest of the crew?"

"I'm sorry, Beka. Everyone we know—our entire world—is gone," Andromeda said softly.

* * *

A most unusual sight greeted the crew of the _Quicksilver Arrow_ as they dropped out of slipstream.

As Pyrrhus had described them, there was a star with nothing but rocky rubble encircling it, the remains of the planets of the Hephaestus system. At the opening of the Nietzschean revolt, two High Guard ships had been lured to this system. Lured to die.

According to all legends, the Andromeda's captain had ordered her crew to abandon ship whilst she and the Andromeda led off the Nietzscheans to buy the survivors as much time as possible. Many theories existed as to the Andromeda's final fate; some believed the Nietzscheans had blown her out of the stars whilst others believed that she had been devoured by the black hole. Others claimed that the silver ship was lost, wandering uncharted routes of the slipstream. Indeed, a great many treasure hunters had scoured out many new routes, all in aid of searching for the near-mythical vessel.

The fate of the Balance of Judgement was far more definite.

The Balance had fought to the last, tearing into the Nietzschean fleet and laying waste to all the ships he could. To this very day, Nietzschean legends of Hephaestus spoke of the Balance as a 'warrior archangel of death'.

But even angels can die.

Most of the Nietzschean fleet had left the system when the Balance's end came. Eight hundred ships had been detailed to eliminate him whilst the others left to go about their own attacks into Commonwealth territory. Of these, a quarter had been destroyed when the fatal blow was struck.

A few High Guard slipfighters and high-speed Nietzschean attack craft had escaped the ensuing explosion with recordings of the disastrous event. A stray Nietzschean armour-piercing warhead had penetrated the Balance's hull more cleanly than expected, and had detonated within him. Deep within the Nova bomb weapons lockers.

The explosion had destroyed the Judgement, nearly all of the surviving Nietzschean ships and every planet in the system. The sun had been diminished in size, although not destroyed outright.

And thus it now was that the salvage crew looked upon a sight that no one had seen in almost three hundred years.

"Get me a thorough sensor sweep on her, Pyrrhus," Carl hoarsely ordered from the pilot's chair.

"Believe what your eyes see." Pyrrhus too seemed almost overwhelmed. "Sensor contacts confirm that it is indeed a High Guard _Glorious Heritage_-class heavy cruiser of pre-Fall vintage. She's taken a great deal of damage…I'm reading life signs, but I can't tell how many. I'm fairly sure that they are few in number, though."

"How…" he shook his head in disbelief, "how did _this_ happen? Have you ever seen anything to indicate this before?"

The mercenary slowly shrugged. "I don't believe so. At a guess, I'd say she was caught in the gravity well of the black hole. The gravitic effects must have interacted with those of her AG field…effectively freezing time within the hull whilst the ship just cleared the singularity by herself, her orbits steadily increasing over the centuries."

"What do we do, Carl?" Trance asked.

He grinned. "Pyrrhus…do their hangar bays still work?"

"I believe so. Why?"

He gestured toward the Andromeda. "Mutual help. If there are survivors and they're even half as good and pure and noble and so on as the legends make the High Guard out to have been, they could probably use our help, and we could always use theirs. I mean, c'mon, we were going to have to go external for some of our repairs anyway. It's just if we could land in one of their hangars, we wouldn't have to worry about problems with EVA suits or anything."

Pyrrhus leaned forward. "Are you sure that's entirely wise? According to the sensors, she is the Andromeda Ascendant—the last thing those survivors will remember will be Nietzscheans—_my_ people—attacking them. They may not be entirely hospitable."

"Well look at the alternatives. We can either leave and risk getting attacked by Kalderans again whilst still damaged, or we can stay here outside and do things the hard way and maybe attract some awkward questions from them."

"Well, if it comes to a vote you've got mine," Trance smiled, leaning back a little in the seat behind the fire-control station. She stifled a yawn as she peeled out of her overalls, revealing rather more casual attire beneath.

Pyrrhus sighed, knowing he wasn't going to convince them otherwise. "I'll go and wake up the Reverend."

* * *

"Three hundred years. I wonder if anyone even remembers what we were fighting for," Beka said absently, still coming to terms with the situation. She followed a pair of androids as they sped a stretcher through the corridors leading to Medical. Harper's injury had been bound, and the young officer was mercifully unconscious.

"They died for what they believed in," Andromeda said, trying to comfort her Captain.

"That's the same speech I always give," Beka said with a bitterness that had never been present before. "Except there's no one to give the speech to now, is there? Their children, Rhade's wives…they've all been dead for at least two hundred years by now."

"We'll find someone. Their descendants. The Commonwealth will know where to find them."

"The Commonwealth," Beka realised. "We need to make contact, let them know we're still alive."

"I'm not picking up any local signals," Andromeda began. "We'll have to…" She paused. "Beka? We have intruders on board!" Indignantly, she added, "They're _trying_ to _rewire_ me!"

At the possibility of some action, Beka seemed to snap out of her depression. "Do they have full control?" she demanded.

Andromeda assessed the situation; "No, but they do have control over the doors."

"Put them through to my wrist monitor," she growled, drawing her force lance.

* * *

"Nice one Trance," Carl nodded appreciatively as the hangar bay's inner doors opened, adjusting the bulging pack on his back.

"Magnificent…" Rev breathed, awestruck, as they stepped into the corridor beyond.

"All of you watch out for unexploded munitions, anti-personnel nanobots, automated attack drones, radiation leaks, blown pressure seals, and especially shrapnel," Pyrrhus sternly warned them. "Believe me, apparently 'inert' wreckage is far more dangerous than most people think."

"Good point. We'd best split up. Keep in touch. As soon as you find anyone, let the rest of us know about it. And see if you can find anything that might tell us if Andromeda herself is still alive."

* * *

"A human, a Magog, a Nietzschean and some pointy-eared purple girl with a tail." Beka shook her head in disbelief. "That sounds _so_ much like a pathetic bar joke. I mean, a _Magog?_ They have to be insane."

She stared at the four images on the little holoscreen. The quartet had spread out, and were now scattered all over the place.

The human, a handsome, classically-featured blonde man somewhere in his early-thirties, was unknowingly headed in the direction of one of the weapons lockers. He wore a pale grey shirt with short sleeves and drab-blue trousers that both adhered tightly to his slender frame, a pair of sandy-yellow flat-soled boots on his feet. He would have looked completely harmless if it weren't for the pair of gauss pistols in cross-draw holsters strapped to his thighs. He moved with caution and an unusual level of stealth, but the weapons remained in the holsters the whole time. A pack was strapped to his back, bulging with anyone's guess what.

The Magog looked like no other that Beka had ever seen before. His fur was clean and combed, his claws meticulous and neat. He wore an orange robe and an unusual medallion of some sort around his neck, but was unarmed.

He moved with a quiet dignity, looking about himself in almost wonder and a deep curiosity that was humbling to behold. He would occasionally run a hand gently across a wall, as though still unable to believe where he was.

The purple girl had entered the Hydroponics bay, and Beka had snorted with a faint stab of mirth at her stunned reaction of 'Pretty.' Andromeda had confirmed that she had no idea as to what her species was, and had informed her captain that scans had revealed almost nothing about their violet guest. They knew her pulse, respiration, electrical activity, body temperature and that she had a tail, but nothing else. She wandered amongst the plants, an almost child-like innocence projected from her.

The Nietzschean, however, caused both Beka and Andromeda a considerable shock.

"Th-that's _Tyr Anasazi!_" Beka stared at the image in disbelief.

"Or rather, a descendant of his," Andromeda corrected. "My scans indicate that it is most likely that he is of the Kodiak Pride, and Captain Anasazi's genetic reincarnation. It's rare, but hardly unheard of. Commander Rhade was genetically identical to an old Captain of mine from almost three centuries ago, Gaheris Rhade."

Beka grinned at her. "Wouldn't that make this guy sort of your nephew? After all, your sister was his first wife."

Andromeda smiled, her hologram's head tilted to one side as they watched the Nietzschean stealthily making his way down a corridor that would lead him to herself and Harper in Medical, gauss rifle at the ready. "It's complicated how these things work out, but in a _very_ obscure way, we could be considered to be distant relations. Although I wouldn't exactly say he was my nephew. We'd be more like very distant cousins."

"Let's go welcome our guests, hmm?" Beka grinned.

* * *

Carl Forbes was far from taken off-guard when the High Guard officer plummeted from a nearby ladder shaft. His senses, intensely and meticulously honed from his youth, had alerted him to the sounds of her movements and her scent fully five minutes in advance.

Thus it was that he found himself staring down the muzzle of a force lance, and she the barrels of his gauss pistols.

"Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?"

Fighting every instinct so very deeply ingrained into his mind and body, he put up the pistols and slowly holstered them. "Carl Forbes. Captain of the salvage vessel the _Quicksilver Arrow_."

She nodded, jaw grimly set. "So you're here to, what, loot the Andromeda?"

He actually grinned at this. "Hardly. Everyone believed the Andromeda to be as dead as this system, destroyed with the old Commonwealth."

The officer ground her teeth, staring in a blind, naked fury into his eyes. "You're lying. The Commonwealth could _never_—"

"Unfortunately, it did." His return was cold and harsh, her boiling fury matched with icy calm. "The Nietzscheans destroyed it, then their Empire collapsed when Pride infighting overtook their dreams. Several inter-Pride wars led to ruin and devastation for thousands of systems—"

He was cut off as the corridor filled with weapons fire. Instinctively he dove to one side, kicking out the High Guard officer's legs out from under her. She toppled to the ground even as a volley of energy blasts tore through the space her skull had occupied a mere second earlier.

"Condition Red!" The call thundered in the confines of the corridor, echoing easily above the sounds of her internal defences as Andromeda's hologram materialised, flickering, shifting in appearance. "We have Condition Red! Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!"

Even as they watched, clambering to their feet once more and dodging weapons blasts, the hologram stabilised. Her attire and demeanour were distinctly different.

She glared at them as fire from her internal defences chased them the length of the corridor, eyes cold and merciless.

* * *

Seamus Harper winced as bright lights stabbed into his eyes, instinctively reaching up to shield them with a hand. He sighed as he felt the cast holding his right shoulder rigid, stretching over with his left hand to swipe at his eyes.

"An-Andromeda?" he rasped, throat dry.

"Intruder Alert! Any authorised personnel, report to Command. Intruders have taken over the ship and all known crewmembers are missing. If I do not receive a direct countermand in two minutes, I will begin emergency venting."

"Oh, great," he groaned, pulling himself upright. He attempted to stand, pushing himself from the bed. He landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, swearing up a storm as pain coursed through his injured shoulder.

"Oh, Rommie, Rommie, Rommie, what _are_ you up to this time?" he muttered to himself, half-stumbling, half-crawling to a console.

* * *

Trance's eyes widened as the doors to the hydroponics garden opened to admit a pair of androids carrying extended High Guard force lances.

"You." A hologram she recognised from the _Arrow_'s historical files as Andromeda materialised between the androids. "Accompany these androids. Attempt to run and you will be eliminated. Attempt to resist and you will be eliminated. Understood?"

She nodded hastily, raising her hands as they advanced and the hologram winked out.

* * *

Anyone want to see this continued? Click that little purple button and let me know. Reviews don't _have_ to be long – although they're great to get… 


	2. Chapter Two: Seraphim's Fall

**CHAPTER TWO**

**SERAPHIM'S FALL**

"_My heart shall ever be yours,_

_through light and darkness,_

_warfare and peacetime,_

_when the stars are all burned out_

_and life turns its great wheel once again."_

—Wedding vow made to the _Pax Magellanic_

* * *

"Carl! Pyrrhus!" The elderly Magog panted as he leapt behind a beam, then ran onwards as an energy beam scorched his fur. That was _too_ close! "Trance! Somebody, _please_ respond! I'm under attack!"

Reverend Behemial Far Traveller had never been quite so terrified in all his long life.

When he had nearly been lynched on Rothesay Drift, when he had been trapped on the Mytosian mining outpost during a Magog attack and been caught between the Magog and the colonists, even when a Gynt'a'rn cult had kidnapped him with the intent to sacrifice him, he hadn't felt quite such fear.

This was different. They had all been dangerous places to begin with, rife with hostility and tension at the best of times. This ship had been the pride of the Systems Commonwealth, supposed to be one of the safest havens that had ever existed.

And it was shooting at him.

"Emergency venting in sixty-five seconds," Andromeda announced.

"Hang tight Rev," Carl's voice crackled over his headset. "Me and Andromeda's skipper have the same problem. Pyrrhus? Trance? You two alright?"

"I'm fine," the mercenary calmly reported, despite the sounds of intense weapons fire in the background of his transmission. "I have a fix on your position Reverend—I can be there within two minutes—"

"Ah, that's a nix on that mate," Carl interrupted. "Seems the ship's chief engineer is in the medical centre, someone's needed to find him and help him out and you seem to be the closest. Rev, can you get Trance whilst Captain Valentine and myself get to the command centre? Trance? Trance, do you copy?"

* * *

Several decks above, Trance handed her headset to the impassive android. Carl's voice was cut off as it closed its hand, crushing the little device.

"Pilot," Andromeda commanded from the largest screen in the command centre. "I require an organic pilot to navigate the slipstream; you will be provided with co-ordinates."

Trance nodded, blinking back tears and briefly closing her eyes as the android behind her pressed the muzzle of a force lance into her lower back, propelling her forwards. A support descended from the cavernous ceiling, supporting her back, armrest controls extending around from it.

"This is your slipstream objective." Andromeda stared coldly at her. "Visualise and execute."

"But—"

"Now!" A force lance pressed against Trance's temple.

She gulped, breathing heavily and slowly to keep from hyperventilating. "All right. Visualising. Honest."

* * *

It usually took a lot to shake Seamus Harper. It was a fact that had been a constant source of banter with his engineering teams.

Andromeda declaring him to be an intruder and trying to kill him was one such situation.

He plunged through cyberspace, into her mind. She lashed out with her defences—defences, he noted, that were weaker, far older than those he knew she had. He'd helped her to design them after all.

He dodged them easily, though he knew he could have destroyed them. He didn't want to risk hurting her after all.

"Intruder! Halt! Surrender yourself immediately!" A hologram arose, booming within the matrix like a goddess' declarations of wrath.

He ignored her, eliminating a defensive virus even as it sought to pierce him and shatter his consciousness, disperse it throughout of the matrix.

Plunging ever deeper, he halted at last, thrusting his hands into the glittering flow of datastreams—

_Yes!_ He whooped triumphantly even as Andromeda's defences finally threw him out.

He winced as he returned to the aches and pains of his body, and yelped as a surge of electricity was discharged into his dataport.

A lopsided grin still adorned his face as he reached for a communications panel, removing the jack from his neck. "Ship-wide. This is Chief Engineer Harper to all personnel. Emergency venting has been prevented, but I can't guarantee it's permanent. Andromeda has no control over environmental systems, but she still has internal defences so watch your step." He grimaced as a brief surge of pain stabbed into him from his injured arm. "I'm working on that one, though. Hang tight."

He whirled at the sound of a door opening, a crescendo of weapons fire echoing briefly throughout the medical deck before the door whined shut again. He instinctively reached for his force lance, then grimaced as he found it missing from its holster, and stared at the newcomer.

The brawny Nietzschean leaned against the doorframe, gauss rifle held loosely but ready in one massive hand as he ran the other over his eyes. Although Harper had only known a few Nietzscheans, he knew his guest to be breathing heavily for one of his kind.

"Lieutenant…Harper, yes?" The new arrival ran a weary hand over his face, shaking off a few stray, sweat-soaked dreadlocks. "Pyrrhus Anasazi. It's a _very_ long story, but it seems your captain and my employer decided you needed someone to aid and guard you, and so here I am."

Braced as he was against the doorframe, Pyrrhus was most fortunate when the deck seemed leap out from beneath him as the walls vibrated with the throb of a ship entering the slipstream.

Harper was not quite as lucky, and was sent sprawling by the violent jump. A powerful arm swiftly yet carefully wrapped itself around his uninjured shoulder, bone blades laid as flat as possible and turned away from him.

He nodded his thanks as he regained his footing and he was released.

"I…I need to get to a conduit," he winced through the pain. "I can get control of the internal defences from there."

Pyrrhus nodded curtly, slamming home a fresh clip of ammunition into his rifle. "I spotted a hatch less than thirty metres from here. Will that do?"

Harper grinned as he leaned over to swipe his toolbelt from a nearby table. "Sounds perfect. Ready when you are."

A powerful hand slapped the door control, and the Nietzschean charged out into the corridor, blazing away. His lips parted, and a great roar arose from deep within his broad chest as he darted and danced through the hail of weapons fire.

Harper licked his lips nervously, then hurled himself out into the firestorm.

* * *

"Dammit." Carl gave up retuning the headset, a gauss pistol smoothly appearing in his hand too fast for the eye to follow. Sheltered as they temporarily were in the conduit, he had to admit he found it far more cramped than was to his liking, even considering some of the confined spaces he'd been in. "No contact. If your ship's harmed her in any way—"

Beka snorted. "Is that a threat?"

"Too sodding right." His eyes seemed to flash in the relative darkness, like light from a blade. "She may be capable of wiping out entire star systems, but when someone, _anyone_, messes with my friends and my crew, they go _down_. _Hard_."

She stared at him, eyebrow raised in disbelief. She could tell he meant what he said. His body language all but screamed it.

What was more, he actually believed himself capable of it, and she knew full well such conviction often was the vital difference between someone's success or failure.

She slowly nodded, bracing a hand against the hatch release mechanism, readying her force lance in the other. "You ready?"

His teeth glittered in the gloom as he grinned broadly. "Let's kick some arse, shall we?"

* * *

Trance sagged at the piloting controls as they emerged from slipstream in exhaustion.

"This is your third objective. Plot a course to the jump point and take us into slipstream," Andromeda ordered impatiently.

"I can't," she groaned. "I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm not very good at navigating the slipstream anyway, and I can't keep on doing it like this."

A hologram materialised beside her as an android approached with an extended force lance. "Very well. You have ten minutes to prepare yourself for the next slipstream jump. If you are incapable of making that jump, you will be eliminated and I will be forced to locate another of your group to pilot me. Now step away from the console."

Trance nodded, blinking to ward off the tug of sleep. She stumbled back from the console as the control support rose back into the ceiling. If it hadn't been for the android she would have fallen to the deck. Prying herself from the android, she slowly tottered over to the wall and slumped down against it.

Andromeda's visage upon the screen narrowed her eyes. The screen adjacent to hers sprang to life, displaying a sensor contact.

"Interesting…I've located an Argosy Special Ops assault transport. It's broadcasting a red-nineteen priority code. We must retrieve it at all costs." She eyed Trance curiously, inclining her head slightly. "Perhaps this delay will prove useful."

"The transport has taken heavy damage," her hologram noted. "No atmosphere. One life-sign…it's in stasis. I'm detecting a High Guard communications implant. The A.I. … the A.I. is deactivated. No escape pods have been launched."

Warning lights flashed; the deck shuddered. "Harpoons have connected." The hologram smiled proudly. "Bringing it in."

Trance forced an exhausted smile.

* * *

Harper was already opening pouches in his belt and plugging in equipment as the Nietzschean leapt into the conduit and hastily sealed the hatch. He worked frantically, adjusting and hacking through security software. Once again, the countermeasures that faced him were woefully out of date, and his programs and commands effortlessly slipped past them.

"Now, in a bit less than a minute the internal defences are going to shut down," he explained. "As soon as that happens, you've got to get out of this conduit and find gunnery station nine—it's three decks down the nearest ladder, take first left, second right, should be visible from in that corridor. Get there and hold it, I'll be right behind you. Just don't bust up any androids too bad—I'm gonna be patching them up again when all this is sorted."

"What purpose does the gunnery station serve in your plan?"

Harper grinned. "Anyone else would simply shut down the internal defences and hope for the best. _I_," he tapped his chest proudly, "am _not_ 'anyone else'. What _I'm_ doing is rerouting control of the defences to the gunnery station where they can be operated manually. That way, if we get some hostile intruders then _we_ can still use 'em, but Rommie won't be shooting at us anymore."

Pyrrhus nodded, then looked questioningly at the engineer. "'Rommie'?"

Harper shrugged. "Yeah, Rommie. Short for Andromeda. She likes it well enough. Come on, _come on_…YES!" He clenched a fist in victory as the internal defences shut down. "Go for it, I'll catch up, don't worry about me!" he shouted even as the Nietzschean sprang from the conduit and ran off, boots pounding heavily against the deck.

* * *

Two pairs of boots hammered against the deck plates; two captains breaking into a run as the internal defences ceased fire.

"What the _hell!_" Beka looked down at her wrist monitor in surprise, coming to a halt.

"_Another_ problem?" Carl asked.

"Andromeda's…she's brought another ship into the hangar. A wrecked High Guard ship with Argosy Special Operations transponders."

"_Eh!_ Another one?" He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as the deck shuddered and they entered slipstream once more. "Could be worth having a dekko at, that."

"You might have a point," she nodded appreciatively, turning about and leading the way to the hangar. "Sounds like a plan Captain Forbes."

"Carl, please." When she looked at him in confusion, he clarified. "My name. The only buggers who call me 'Captain Forbes' are new clients, posh clients, the authorities, the snarkier variety of Nietzscheans and people I'd much rather riddle with gauss rounds than talk to. Since you have smooth forearms, are not part of any recognised authority or nobility, are not attempting to hire me and I have no real reason to dislike you, call me Carl."

She blinked. "Okay…thanks."

He grinned broadly, waving a finger in mock-admonishment. "Don't think for a minute I'm going to start saluting you or running flags up poles Captain Valentine."

"Beka."

"Come again?"

"'Beka' will do fine. And the saluting isn't necessary."

He laughed silently. "Glad to hear it. Rev?" He keyed his headset. "Rev, the Andromeda's captain and I are heading for one of the hangars—seems Andromeda's recovered a ship. Can you carry on the search for Trance?" A static-ridden reply hissed from the earpiece, indecipherable to Beka, and her companion unconsciously nodded. "Ta."

The deck ceased shuddering as they leapt from slipstream once more, and Beka instinctively leapt down a ladder shaft, engaging her anti-gravity harness to slow her descent. She looked up even as her boots met the deck. She'd forgotten, albeit for an instant, that Carl was not equipped with such a device.

This failed to deter him. Reaching into his pack he donned a pair of thick leather gloves and attached a climbing piton to the ladder. Threading the end of a rope through the eye of the piton, he strapped a harness about his waist, clipped the rope to the harness and leapt into a freefall. Beka stepped back a pace as he plummeted, to land neatly, nimbly dropping into a crouch to discharge his momentum before rising once more.

"Nice gizmo," he observed as he removed the harness and replaced it in his pack.

* * *

Rev checked his scanner once again, following the last signal Trance's headset had emitted before being silenced.

He worried about her a great deal. She could take care of herself, with the exception of a few past incidents of decidedly unusual circumstances.

This situation counted as having unusual circumstances. They should never have come here.

His eyes widened and he halted. He looked up and all about him, scenting the air.

Nothing new—just the grease Pyrrhus and Carl used to service their weaponry, the Nietzschean and human themselves of course, his own scorched fur—he would need a good wash after they got out of this situation—and two unfamiliar scents whom he supposed were the High Guard captain and engineer.

Of Trance, there was no trace. But then, he sighed as he wound the scanner's strap about his wrist and climbed a ladder, he had never been able to pinpoint her scent—

He sniffed deeply as the ship left slipstream once again.

And snarled at what he sensed.

* * *

Two shapes burst through the doors, an extended force lance and a pair of pistols snapping about the hangar bay beyond.

"What the bloody hellfire happened to them?" The hauler captain's voice was a whisper.

Great holes peppered the hull plating. A long, smooth slash ran the length of the once sleek-lined craft, penetrating the cockpit. As they advanced and clambered inside through one of the gaping maws, a thin layer of ice was clearly visible, coating every surface.

They crunched their way through the deserted hulk, placing their feet carefully. A pistol whispered its way back into a holster; the force lance collapsed, so as to afford themselves a slightly better measure of balance.

Still wearing his rope jumping gloves, Carl brushed ice from a console surface. "Odd," he mused.

Beka looked over at him. "What?"

"There's still power in some of the systems—emergency manoeuvring thrusters, PDLs…" He frowned, looked up and stared her straight in the eye. "Unless this widget's on the blink, there's an operating stasis pod on this wreck. Fully sealed, life support—the lot. Someone's alive on this thing."

Beka glanced down at her force lance, scanning the area. "This way." She indicated one of the corridors.

"You sure?"

She grinned confidently at him. "My force lance is."

He groaned at this and followed her. "Primitive sense of humour…" he muttered under his breath.

* * *

Ice crumbled, snarling and creaking as the pod's door opened.

Clutching at a wrist, wincing from cold and pain and loss of blood, the pod's occupant staggered out. He shivered, clutching his cerise jacket closer about himself, and noted with sorrow that the other pods were just as badly damaged as he remembered.

He was alone. He was most likely not in his time anymore, and he could be anywhere in or beyond the Known Worlds. But he was alive.

He leaned heavily against a wrecked console, ignoring the cold that seeped from the ice into his forearm. He closed his eyes, a tear welling, as he forced back the memories that spilled forth.

Memories of screaming, and death.

Of his failure.

Wiping away the stray moisture even as his tears started to freeze, he checked his equipment—just as stark and miniscule as he remembered it, unfortunately—and drew his force lance, flexing his bone blades to check that they still heeded his call. He smiled grimly, finding the muscles to be as responsive as ever.

He straightened, flinching as flickers of pain shot from his damaged wrist, and headed off into the ship's icy interior, one stumbling step at a time.

* * *

Harper winced slightly then sighed as he sank into the gunnery seat, carefully adjusting his injured shoulder as he did so. "Hel-looo internal defences!" he winked at the Nietzschean mercenary whilst accessing the relevant control systems.

Pyrrhus frowned, sniffed the air. "Odd."

"What?"

He shrugged, slowly shook his head. "It's—don't worry. I'm sure it's nothing."

Vibrations and metallic-sounding thumps resounded throughout the corridor, growing progressively louder.

"That's not 'nothing'!" the engineer shouted over the din, scrolling through readouts from the internal sensors. "We're under attack!"

* * *

Like a swarm of insects, they poured from the inky blackness of space, raining down on Andromeda's hull.

Andromeda glared at Trance from the screen. "Boarding parties detected. Your accomplices have seized control of my internal defences—they've done their job well."

"Your allies will be _most_ pleased," her hologram growled.

"Allies?" Trance stared at a screen displaying the boarding craft tearing their way through Andromeda's hull, shaking her head slowly in confusion. "Them? I don't even know who they are."

* * *

A silhouette stumbled out of the shadows, and two weapons snapped up, training on the survivor.

Beka's breath caught about a lump that had appeared in her throat, her eyes growing wide with shock.

With recognition.

"This is Captain Forbes of the salvage vessel _Quicksilver Arrow_! Identify yourself!"

The challenge echoed throughout the dead ship.

Her force lance sank to her side as she shook her head in disbelief and denial, hoping against hope that the wraith would leave.

"Admiral Gaheris Rhade of the High Guard. Commander-in-chief of Argosy Special Operations." His own force lance remained aimed squarely at them.

"Friend of yours?" Carl idly asked, as calmly as one might when out for a stroll by a river.

"Admiral…I'm Captain Valentine of the Andromeda Ascendant." He stared at her in surprise that was clearly visible for a fleeting second. "You've been missing for…for quite some time."

He was so very like her first officer. In features, in build and demeanour.

So very like the man who had sought to kill her. The man whom she had killed.

Carl's pistol slid back into its holster, and Gaheris lowered the force lance. "You alright Beka?"

"Just…it's complicated. We don't have the time right now."

"Fair enough. In case you're wondering Admiral," he turned to face the High Guard legend, "Andromeda seems to have hit upon the idea that we, including her own captain and chief engineer, are all intruders and is heading to anyone's guess where. She also seems to have abducted one of my crew, so haste is rather important right now."

Gaheris nodded wearily. "Lead the way."

* * *

Fingers flying over the controls, Harper groaned as he realised another group of Magog had slipped past his defences. There was, he decided as he gunned down another group six decks above, a very good reason why A.I.s were supposed to do this sort of thing and not humans or other organics—their minds were much faster and they weren't encumbered by the delays of flesh and muscle.

A gauss rifle barked behind him, and a single yowling Magog tumbled from a nearby conduit.

"I can't keep doing this!" he shouted as he activated a weapons battery at the other end of the corridor, blazing away at another group. "We need Andromeda!"

"In case you've forgotten, she isn't that kindly disposed toward us right now!" Pyrrhus swiped at another furry body as it struggled from the conduit, snarling as he disembowelled the Magog with his bone blades and kicked the hatch closed.

"Take over the weapons! I'll go in, maybe I can change her mind!"

The Nietzschean shrugged expansively as he slid into the adjacent seat and took control of the weapons. "In all honesty, I hope you succeed."

Harper nodded shakily as he inserted a cable into the console. "So do I," he muttered, as he slid the other end into his dataport.

* * *

A volley of effectors and gauss rounds ripped through the teaming horde of Magog, pitching them from their feet.

"Weapons locker! Now!" Beka shouted, extending her force lance and charging around a corner, smashing the weapon into the snarling features of another of the furry creatures.

* * *

Rev howled as he fought before the doors to Andromeda's command centre, driving his claws into the gut of another Magog. Another of his own kind fell, dead at his hand.

He howled again. Not from rage, but sorrow and loss.

The loss of a piece of himself.

* * *

"Your friends are fighting the Magog." Andromeda was confused as she stared at her purple captive.

"Now do you believe we're not intruders?"

"No. I don't even have your species on file, and most of your friends are most certainly not High Guard personnel. Prepare to slipstream to the next destination on my mark. Mark."

"Going, going," Trance mumbled, glancing at a screen. Rev was definitely trying to help her, and she knew that Carl and Pyrrhus would never abandon her. A smile crept onto her face as she remembered how the now-elderly Magog priest had always been there to offer advice and comfort in the darkest of her days, the feel of his soft fur the times he had wrapped her in a warm hug. They would all go through hell itself if only to try and aid one of their own.

She only hoped they would not be too late.

**

* * *

Author's Notes: I do have Chapters Four and Five reasonably finished, but I'm still going through, making a couple of last-minute adjustments here and there. Six is still a work-in-progress though. On another note:**

Shelly, Shelly, Shelly. A few things in reply to your review. I take your point about the first part of Chapter One being a rehash of "Under the Night"—but that was _intentional_. And I did mention it in advance. Allow me to explain my reasons for this:

First, the Gaheris/Telemachus situation. There are quite a few Andromeda viewers who maintain that Telemachus could never have made the same mistakes as Gaheris. Fair enough, it's an interesting view, but to be honest I don't subscribe to that theory myself. I was trying to show that under similar circumstances, Telemachus could make exactly the same mistakes as Gaheris.

Second, you criticise the originality. How else could Andromeda start but with the Fall of the Systems Commonwealth? Seriously? I wanted to cover as much as necessary to make for a smooth read. Even at the end of Chapter Three, this fic will barely have started warming up—the pace is barely beginning.

Third is an objective I have with this fic. The average fanfic is written in the assumption that the reader already knows a great deal about the fictional milieu; I wanted LKF to be accessible to _anyone_, Drom fan or not. Ideally, I'd like it to be accessible to people who've only seen a couple of episodes, or maybe none at all. Starting this way _shrugs_ it seemed like a good way at the time.

But with regards to originality you seem to have ignored the little hints that have been laid down as groundwork in Chapter One. The destruction of the Balance of Judgement at Hephaestus for example—this means no Restorians. The reference to Tyr being a captain, and Andromeda being—technically speaking—related to his genetic reincarnation. The _Quicksilver Arrow_ and Carl Forbes, the first time that I know of that someone's actually done a character who didn't have an American accent (the English have landed! Whey-hey! About time my people got in on the act)—yes, okay, purple Trance is still around (was there ever anything said to indicate that she could age at the same rate as humans?) as is Reverend Behemial, (the Magog showed up three hundred years later, ergo he was born three hundred years later) and okay, Pyrrhus used to be a mercenary—more on that in later chapters. Yes, there are similarities, but then, if there weren't links to the series, it would be original fiction, not fanfic and wouldn't belong on this site. Shelly, I really don't mean to be patronising, but you need just a little more patience with this fic.

The first three chapters (which I've already got typed up) set the basic groundwork for this fic—who everyone is in this AU, and establish a few plot threads, and Three introduces a new faction or two (and an old one made new again). Chapters Four through Six (Four and Five are almost ready to go, I'm still working a swarm of bugs out of Six) establish a lot more of what this new future is like, set up more plot threads and introduce some of the myriad factions I'll be using—and believe you me, some of those make the Restorians look as dangerous as a book club. After that, there may be the occasional reference to the series (such as Andromeda's delight in formal meetings, diplomatic receptions, ceremonies etc., Trance will still be cryptic, Harper the resident grease monkey and Dihedra is visited in Chapters Four and Five…but there won't be any Magog there. Much worse than that) but beyond that there will be significant differences. Stick around, and I'm sure you'll see what I mean. I'm an avid reader of Johnny "Two Combs" Howard's novels and _Warhammer 40,000_, so these will influence my writing style. There's a short scene in Chapter Four that my beta compared to a snippet of "The Lord of the Rings"—I can't say I was consciously influenced by the scene, but there are some remarkable similarities.

I appreciate your honesty Shelly, and okay, maybe the first chapter doesn't really suit your tastes. But if you stick around, I think you'll find this fic will get quite interesting and unusual. Originality, by Chapter Eight at the latest, will not be a problem, unless readers feel that the fic is departing too much from the series. After all, Dylan won't be around, and one golden rule of thumb I'm using is this: no character, canon or original, will be unnecessarily attired in such a way purely for exploitative purposes. (E.g. Rommie's skimpy prison garb from "A Rose in the Ashes" – that just ain't happening.) Please remember though, there are more polite ways of giving constructive criticism, hmm? _looks over glasses and grins_ Anyway, thanks for the review.


	3. Chapter Three: Perpetuous Resolve

**CHAPTER THREE:**

**PERPETUOUS RESOLVE **

"_Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,_

_Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;_

_Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,_

_Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn."_

—William Butler Yeats, '_Into the Twilight_'

* * *

Flesh tore and parted, bones snapped and blood gushed forth as the bone blades slashed into the information broker's ribcage.

Caterina snarled as she jerked her forearm from the fatally wounded Nightsider, catching her victim with a backhanded blow that split open his skull and propelled him and the chair to which he was bound to the floor. Too loyal for his own good, was this one. Loyalty that had been well-bought indeed.

Severus and Ulixes exchanged glances at her anger, pausing briefly in their search of the broker's den. Shrugging, the elder Nietzschean returned to his perusal of a stack of flexis, and Ulixes slid another datachip into his 'port, closing his eyes as he absorbed the information within.

Nerrentar had gathered a considerable wealth of knowledge about their Pride's military standing and activities—so comprehensive that Ulixes had found information pertaining to operations of which even this team had not been privy to. Of course, he had no intention of informing the others of the extent of this development—to do so would be to interfere with the plans he had formulated in the past hour.

He sighed contentedly as his thoughts turned once more to the operation's leader. Caterina Bianca was an agent of considerable skill and repute, and he had to admit to finding the silver-haired firebrand most alluring, and certainly an extremely capable operative. If a little prone to outbursts.

A boot heel slapped the furry carcass, breaking bones, and he smiled privately at the sound. Outbursts such as that one. But that truly was part of her charm. It was only too bad she was sterile. Even so, despite his instincts and adherence to the conventions of his species, he was extremely tempted by the idea of entering into a courtship with her.

His thoughts drifted back to the cause of her recent anger, remembering how her eyes had shone as she threatened, seduced and tormented the broker. Nerrentar had kept no record, or at least no record that they had yet found, of the identity of his client. Of who desired so ample an archive of data about the Orcas. Of who had paid him so very handsomely.

Hence the search.

He felt a stab of curiosity as the chip's data flowed past him—a tourist brochure of all things! A pamphlet detailing the nightlife of the Dihedra system.

Ulixes Praetorias of the Orca Pride never did see the shot that ended his life. The shot that so very narrowly avoided damaging the data chip in his neck. Nor would he ever know just how important that chip really was.

* * *

Caterina howled in frustration and anger as Severus and Ulixes fell in swift succession, tearing out her falcate hanger as she leapt to the gantry way that ran about the cavernous room's upper level. The barbed steel slashed at the shooter's throat, and her bone blades, still dripping with the Nightsider's blood, stood erect and begging to her that they be sheathed in this impudent upstart's flesh. 

The shooter—a _kludge_, she realised as she drank in his scent—flipped himself smoothly backwards over the rail. Her free hand tore her pistol from its holster, and she blazed away even as he landed into a neat roll, dodging and dancing his way through her shots.

"_Bastard._" He reached cover—a large, bulky computer bank. "KLUDGE!" she screamed as she vaulted the rail. "Surrender now and I'll be merciful when I kill you."

She paused as she detected a metallic sound, eyes widening as she realised exactly what it was.

This was _impossible_.

Hurling himself up and over the computer bank, the human was a blur. Even shrouded as he was in his long pale brown coat, he moved impossibly fast, and she was unable to smell any cybernetic enhancements in his body.

The staff snapped her head back, another blow caught her in the abdomen and she crumpled in on herself. Wheezing and snarling, she slashed out with her blade and the figure dodged to one side, flipping the staff so as to reverse its end.

She looked up, meeting the harsh glare of light that spat from the force lance's muzzle with a glower of her own.

* * *

Gaheris Rhade sagged against the weapons locker wall with a sigh of relief whilst the salvage captain sealed the door, emptying a pistol into a group of Magog that struggled to get past the fortified barrier. 

Andromeda's captain opened the case at the end of the chamber, helping herself to a new force lance and tossed one to him. He grinned wearily even as he snapped it out of the air; despite his blood loss, injuries and fatigue, his reflexes were as razor sharp as ever.

"When we're done here, we head for Command," she bluntly stated. "Someone's flying my ship, and I want to get control again."

"Would you mind if I borrowed one of those?" the privateer—_Forbes_, he reminded himself—asked, glaring at the four ammunition clips that lay in his hand. "I left most of the ammo on my ship—we were expecting to have a discussion and then get stuck in with repair work, not a full-blown firefight."

Beka looked pensive as she glanced at him. "How do I know I can trust you with a force lance?"

He looked grim as he snapped a clip into a pistol. "Right now, ensuring the safety of my crew and ship are my top priorities, and working with you seems the best way to do that. Besides," he grinned at her as the other clip clicked home, "you need me just as much as I you. The Admiral here has barely two pints of blood in his body, if that—no offence mate, but you need a medic. One of my crew happens to be an expert in that field, so—" he winked, "looks like you're stuck with me."

Gaheris nodded weakly. Though he was loath to admit it, he was weak.

A nod from the platinum-haired captain. A third force lance was drawn.

* * *

"Come on, come on…" Harper muttered to himself, scrabbling his way through a sea of datastreams. "Memory core, memory core. Who's got the memory core. Ha! Rommie, you're gonna owe me one for this," he grinned. Grabbing hold of another datastream, he examined it, then turned to another one. 

"_Second time's the charm,"_ he thought, opening the strand—and Andromeda's intercom.

"Captain? Captain Valentine, can you hear me?"

"Lieutenant? Where are you?"

"I hacked into Andromeda's main memory. She seems to have reverted to a pre-combat personality backup, and I, uh, I found a record of what happened after she made that backup but it's locked away under an Argosy Level Seven Encryption? Thing is, it looks old, I mean _really_ old—at least three hundred years or more. She's been trying to kick me out with defensive software that belongs in a museum." He shrugged helplessly. "What's the magic word?"

* * *

Beka looked at the others. "She won't recognise my codes. If the encryption's really that old, then this mission Andromeda's performing happened years before I was even born." 

Gaheris grinned through his pain as he buckled on the breastplate of a suit of Lancer armour. "She'll recognise mine. I was her fifth commanding officer after all. Andromeda, we have a Level Seven emergency. Unlock all classified memory files. Authorisation, Admiral… Authorisation Lieutenant Gaheris Rhade, Argosy Special Operations Service, Division Five. Override code 'Grey-Break-Seven-Nineteen'."

* * *

Harper frowned inside the matrix even as the barriers melted before him and he found himself standing in a visual representation of Andromeda's command centre. "Rhade? Captain, what's going on—?" 

"I'll explain later Mr. Harper," she interrupted. "Long story. Focus on the memory files for now."

"Okay, well, I'm in." He stared about him in growing fear. "Oh, man. Captain? I think when Andromeda made that backup, she was attempting the same mission she's on now."

"No surprise there," she replied.

He gulped as he passed deeper and deeper into the file. "Yeah? Well, it gets worse."

Magog roamed freely around Command, munching on the bodies of dead High Guard officers. A trio of Lancers lay writhing and screaming in agony as the snarls and squeals of Magog larvae were clearly audible, climaxing as the vile little creatures revelled in their bloody birth.

Feeling sick, Harper forced himself to speak. "She lost, Captain. Andromeda was overrun, and her entire crew massacred."

_

* * *

The city, so artistic in its architecture, merged seamlessly with the landscape. Despite the aging damage from the decades of war suffered, life still thrived there, animals and trees flourishing within its walls and sheltered snugly in the lee of its elegant towers. _

_A fiery trail burned its way across the dazzling blue skies. Toward its target._

_Toward the city._

_Light swept out from where the flaming harbinger landed, engulfing the majestic streets and thriving ancient trees._

_As she watched in horror from a park bench, the light swept throughout the city, engulfing everything and everyone. Children, human and Nietzschean, Than and Perseid, screamed in terror, huddling desperately with their families and each other as the light touched them._

_She screamed too, howling and weeping as the huddled innocents flew apart like leaves as the light fell upon them, her cries echoing with agony as the murderously radiant fingers caressed her as well. As her flesh burned and poured blood-red flames into the air, as her bones cracked and snapped and melted in the intense heat, her muscles and organs exploded into bloody pulp and all that was left of her were her screams_—

Sweating and panting, wide-eyed, she sat bolt upright in her bed, sheets tangled all about her from the thrashings of her troubled slumbers. She looked down at her left hand, and carefully placed the weapon it had instinctively grasped on the covers as she slid from the bed.

She quickly glanced about her chambers; all seemed to be in order. Her desk, of course, was an utter mess, awash with flexis and datachips, a computer terminal the only bare bastion to be found. To the untrained eye it looked to have been ransacked.

Crossing to the windows, she shrugged her uniform's jacket over her shoulders, over the thin shirt and slacks that comprised her nightwear. She smiled briefly and snorted quietly in faint amusement as she noted the time displayed by the chronometer; it was most doubtful that anyone save the sentries and those whose work took them into such intolerable hours was about, but it still would not do for one of her standing to be spotted in such…_reduced_…attire.

She reached through the billowing drapes and flung open the floor-deep windows, arching her neck and closing her eyes in pleasure as the light of the moons flooded her chamber. She revelled in the beauty of their light, allowing the calming effect to wash through her. Her raven-dark tresses glittered in the silver light, her jacket buckles shone proudly and her skin, paled in the light, glowed as brightly as a star to her eyes. Ivory bone blades, polished and nurtured, gleamed and verily radiated their promises to provide defence to the very last.

She gazed out upon the city before her.

The city she had seen murdered in her nightmare.

War came once more to the ramparts of this world. She could almost smell it, even now, so long from its coming.

It would find the men, women and hermaphrodites under her command waiting for it, aye, and ready too. To take victory once again.

But how much longer could they do so? Attacks were constant from the multiple factions, unrelenting and harsh. Casualties were inevitable in every campaign, and it pained her as it did the inhabitants of this world to know that the attacks would never end.

She turned her liquid brown eyes upon the photograph by her bed. If any could restore hope to a people with none, it was him. He would find it.

If anyone could rekindle the fires within her heart and breathe hope and life into her once more, it was him.

She reached over to the bed, and took up her weapon once more. Shining as it did in the moons' light, it looked if anything more deadly, more deceptively beautiful than ever.

They would hold. She would lead until she had only herself to command, and even then she would continue to hold and defend, to fight on to the very last breath she drew. The life of not one innocent would be taken until she and all her soldiers had fallen, and any foe would be hard-pressed in this task.

Thus it was that she vowed this night, in the twilight of her people.

* * *

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Carl shouted over the sounds of his pistols blazing away. 

Beka shrugged beneath her body armour, snapping her force lance about and blasting a pair of Magog. "Be my guest!"

The salvage captain grunted as he neatly planted a booted foot into the face of a yowling Magog, kicking it back a pace before blowing its brains out with a single well-placed shot. "Did your ships used to go army-barmy a lot in the old days?"

"Rarely. There was one missile frigate, the Halo of Glory, he ended up developing shellshock and needed years of therapy. He was never quite the same again."

"So what—_oh, bollocks!_" Pistols empty, Carl spread his arms wide as another Magog rushed him. He could try to reload a pistol, or—

His chin jerked forward, slamming into the Magog's face and reducing its features to a bloodied pulp. A kneecap met a stomach, and a heavy, empty pistol clubbed the creature to death. Carl glared at the tumbling corpse as he wiped the smeared grey matter from the weapon's heavy muzzle. "As I was saying, what made Andromeda go on the blink?"

"No idea," she admitted. "She was sabotaged during Hephaestus—this could be the result of that, just a delayed response."

"Hm. If we find my crew unharmed by her, she has my sympathies."

"And if not?" Gaheris shot him an inquisitive glance.

"There'll be hell to pay." The hammers slammed home empty on both pistols for the last time, and they vanished into their holsters once again as he drew out the force lance.

* * *

Harper emerged from Andromeda's matrix to find a bloodied and battered Pyrrhus Anasazi operating the internal defences with a vigour he had seldom seen outside of High Guard personnel. Magog corpses littered the corridor behind their seats, and the walls were scoured of all insigniae and their paintwork. 

What was perhaps most surprising was the music that issued forth from a little device on the Nietzschean's waist—the 1812 Overture. Pyrrhus grinned as his fingers flickered over the fire controls, and favoured the engineer with a wink when he noticed his emergence from cyberspace.

"Have you succeeded?"

Harper shrugged shakily, grimacing as his mind returned in full to the pain of his body. "I've started the reintegration of Andromeda's memories. Shouldn't take too long—quarter hour, half hour tops. I, ah, see you've been busy?"

"This is the most fun I've had in a year!" he laughed. "Just don't tell my employer that—he worries that he and his crew don't keep me sufficiently entertained."

Harper stared at him incredulously, blinked in confusion. "Oh-kaaay…your secret's safe with me."

Pyrrhus paused briefly to mop sweat from his brow, and wiped Magog blood from his thick flak jacket. "A good plan, Mr. Harper. If you should ever find yourself looking for employment, we could make a good team."

The other grinned. "Thanks. But there's no way in hell I'm leaving Andromeda."

He shrugged. "Entirely your loss my friend."

* * *

On the Command deck, Trance was tiring. 

"All androids are down. Magog are within fifty meters of the command centre. Next destination," Andromeda ordered from the viewer.

"I can't. I can't do this anymore," Trance groaned in exhaustion.

"We may be pushing her too hard. Slip piloting is taxing." Andromeda's hologram was beginning to look concerned.

"We have to keep going," her image on the screen declared. "We may not be able to hold the Magog off much longer."

"If we continue, she might make a mistake and that would be worse than waiting," the hologram mused.

"It's all happening again." Andromeda gasped.

Trance looked at her, perplexed. "What do you mean 'again?'"

Her hologram looked confused.

Trance grew even more worried. "Andromeda?"

"Memories. I…"

"You've done this before, haven't you?" Trance realised. "This…all of this…you've done this before."

Andromeda stared at her contemplatively from the screen. "I remember failure."

Trance jumped as sparks flew from the door. Someone was trying to cut through it.

* * *

"Andromeda, don't let me down now of all times," Beka muttered to herself as she gouged and tore at the door seals with her force lance. 

Beside her slumped an exhausted Magog. He'd been most surprised, but extremely relieved to see them, having battled there for quite some time alone, and even despite his weariness had been most polite in greeting her and Rhade. He was convinced that a member of the salvage crew was within Command, and that had been good enough for Forbes. The Admiral, the legend himself, leaned heavily against the wall, firing steadily one-handed.

A Magog plummeted from a nearby ladder shaft, only to be pitched to the deck as an extended force lance caught it in the abdomen, the killing shot fired point-blank. With a deft flick of his wrists, Forbes flipped the lance lengthways, firing down the sloping corridor into the charging ranks of Magog, lending his fire to Rhade's.

* * *

Trance flexed her tired fingers as they emerged from slipstream. "Andromeda, think. You have to remember. You've done this before. Where did you go? What happened?" She smiled faintly in what she hoped was an encouraging manner. "And once you remember that, all the rest should fit into place." 

"I don't. I…" The hologram broke off, shaking her head in confusion.

"We have to finish the run," her screen image decided. "Jump all the way to the final location."

"Where is that?" Trance asked.

"A hundred more slips, at least," Andromeda's hologram admitted.

"But that can take days, even weeks," Trance pointed out.

"Our orders are clear," Andromeda snapped from the screen. "We have to complete the mission."

Behind Trance, the doors opened to admit an unlikely quartet; two High Guard officers, two haulers, stumbling as they entered.

"Slipstream! Now!" Andromeda ordered, anger flashing in her eyes at the breach of her command centre's security.

Trance nodded, and they entered the slipstream.

While Carl gave him covering fire, Rev nimbly opened a control panel, sealing off Command once again.

With a shuddering, Andromeda exited slipstream. The slipstream control support rose back into the ceiling, and Trance leaned heavily against the console before staggering away.

A vast structure filled the viewscreen. Several worlds, cratered and battered, were linked in a latticed framework. A miniature sun glowed a sickly pale yellow from the centre of the structure.

Beka stepped up to the piloting console. "What the hell? Andromeda, report."

Her visage on the screen looked at her, vague recognition hazily dawning. "Who…?"

"Do as she says," her hologram advised.

"Scanning. They're worlds. Fourteen of them joined into some kind of structure."

"You're Beka," her hologram realised. "My captain…"

She nodded. "The structure. Focus on the structure."

"I remember this," Andromeda's screen visage realised. "I've seen it before, but millions of light years away in another galaxy."

Beka nodded. "This is what you were looking for on your last mission."

"It was," she agreed. "Those worlds—they're hollow. And they're full of Magog. Trillions of them." The deck shook once more. "More Magog assault ships have impacted on the hull. Internal defences are still operational. Another wave is already inbound."

Beka leapt into action, grasping the piloting controls. "Carl, take over the fire control station. Andromeda…"

The hauler captain nodded as he vaulted the console. "Missile tubes are off-line, powering AP batteries—"

"…take us out!"

"—am putting down covering fire into those swarmships, activating PDL's—"

"Beka. I'm detecting a massive power build-up in the world structure," Andromeda announced from the screen.

"Evasive manoeuvres. Fire control, lay down a smokescreen if you can."

"Smokescreen, got yer. Mines away on timed detonators, PDL's and AP batteries have fully engaged the swarmships. We can handle what we've got, but no more."

"It's firing," Andromeda announced. "Point singularity weapons!"

"_WHAT!_" Beka stared at her as she danced Andromeda through the firestorm. "How the hell did Magog get experimental black-ops weaponry?"

"Beka…I'm detecting signs of heavy damage on the structure. Elevated radiation levels, EMP X-rays, gamma rays, oscillated neutrinos…I remember now." She stared at them. "The last time I engaged the structure…Captain Perim ordered a Nova strike."

Gaheris nodded weakly. "That was my team's mission—to locate the Magog worldship and plant an experimental enhanced Nova bomb within, and detonate it. It was hoped that we could destroy it…and we failed. We blew out the sun again…took out two of the planets. The others…" he broke off, collapsed to the deck.

"Trance!" Carl shouted over the weapons' fire. "Work your magic if you please!"

She crossed to the injured Nietzschean, helping him upright as he blinked blearily and nodded his thanks.

The deck shuddered as more swarmships latched onto the hull, and Beka growled under her breath.

"Novas have slowed them down before. Rommie, how long before that thing reaches known space?"

"Approximately two years. But if we can destroy the sun, at least twice that, maybe more."

"The gloves are off."

* * *

Charlemagne Bolivar was a man who could not be hurried, nor upset, with any ease whatsoever. 

Thus it was that when his aide-de-camp arrived to inform him of the most recent losses in battle against the Drago-Kazov Pride, the Arch-Duke appeared not to have heard him, as he continued his luxurious dinner, the speed of his spoon dipping into his fine caviar unchanged.

It was, he decided, so very tiresome how the Dragans refused to acknowledge their territorial boundaries.

It was with this in mind that he ordered the deployment of another fleet group to the Ynarris Cluster.

* * *

"Initiating Nova deployment sequence." Beka smiled grimly. "Let's bring it." 

"Acting First Officer Carl Forbes. Nova deployment authorised. Zero Zero Strike Red Zero." A siren sounded.

"Acting Armsmaster Trance Gemini. Nova deployment authorised. Retro Nine Blue Strike Five Nine Five." A second siren, a second green light.

"Fire Control Officer Gaheris Rhade. Arming Nova weapons one through forty. Execution code nine five over seven blue five. ARM." One light was left to be lit.

Rev looked up from his console. "Ready for your final order," he announced.

"Captain Rebecca Valentine, commanding officer. Nova deployment authorisation ten break alpha strike strike strike."

Carl looked up from his station. "They're ready."

Beka grinned as she wove them through another wave of swarmships. "Missile tubes one through ten. Fire." The deck trembled as the warheads leapt from their tubes. "Second salvo. Fire. Third salvo. Fire. Fourth salvo. Fire!"

"All missiles away," Carl confirmed. "Suggest we get the hell out of here?"

"Just a minute," she looked over at him. "We need all the data we can get on that thing. We'll see what the Novas can do, then run like hell."

The viewscreens went completely white, and they all glanced away, fleetingly blinded by the dazzling flash.

When the view cleared once again, the worldship still lay there. More battered than before, its sun destroyed and another three planets lay in shattered ruins.

It still stood, even as Beka flung them into slipstream.


End file.
